Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher considered a central figure of modern philosophy believed that the human ability to create concepts from our view of the world, its laws, and reason was the source of our morality. Little did Kant realize he was the first to actual identify what we call today as habits, a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. Also referred to as custom, routine, pattern, way, norm, tradition, rule, or a matter of course. Many psychologists consider habits as the brains way of learning from our day-to-day encounters. In fact, there are volumes of books dedicated to the best of human habits. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey or The Habits of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Joe Dispenza. Everyone’s journey has it’s own blueprint but one thing is for certain, within each lifescape comes habits. Habits seem to fall into two categories, the habits that we are not ashamed to admit to like eating healthy and regular exercise then there are the unwanted unhealthy habits we tend to defend or avoid answering completely. When conceptualizing a habit, think of your body as an aircraft and the brain as the cockpit and within the cockpit a control panel. A habit, in essence is likened to your body being on autopilot. The preprogramming of autopilot can be compared to the brain being prewired to perform the everyday maneuvers of daily life with or without its actual involvement. These ingrained patterns of behavior allow us to live a lot of our lives in this mode of operation. Most of us live life running almost fully on autopilot. By this I mean that we function almost completely without thinking. Each day, you wake up, shower, shave, brush your teeth, comb your hair, have breakfast, get in your car, and manage to get to work without too much thought. In fact, most times you can’t seem to get through the daily grind without routines while other days you could curse your inability to break from those same laborious, sometimes tiresome actions. The power of habits is that they insure that you use as little conscious energy as possible, leaving yourself free to focus your available energy in new ways.
The view that I want you to explore is that the brain’s memory of past experiences are what create your future habits. Psychologists believe that by the time we hit mid-30 our personality is completely formed; the brain’s subconscious responses and perceptions are already running our lives. In fact, researchers think that 5 percent of the mind is conscious, struggling against the 95 percent that is subconsciously running your brain’s day-to-day programming. In other words, the operating system of your subconscious mind acts as a computer program behind the scenes of your conscious awareness. How could this happen to your brain without you knowing it? Well, neuroscience has a principle called Hebb’s Law that simply states that nerve cells that fire together, wire together. This idea demonstrates that if your brain repeatedly activates the same nerve cells, eventually those stored thoughts and patterns of behavior will develop a long-term relationship called a mental signature. And this mental signature becomes your signature personality. The combination of thinking the same thoughts combined with acting the same way, and feeling the same emotions, begin to enrich these patterns of behavior.
The brain’s thought processes create habits for everything you do, which in turn controls what you think, feel, how you learn, remember, move and talk. The brain has been referred to as the organ of personality, character, and intelligence. The issue with habits is that the brain processes both the positive and negative habituations in the same way. And like any muscle in the human body, the more your brain experiences a particular pattern of behavior, the stronger those habitual patterns good or bad become. Whether it’s overuse of technology, overeating, over training, learning a language, or driving your car, researchers are of the opinion that all patterns of ingrained behavior become habits and are based on the same types of brain mechanisms. This brain-intensive process referred to as creating habits, rituals, behaviors, or adaptations, is an indestructible neurological fact of life. The bad news by Joe Dispenza, the author of many books surrounding the brain once said, “That the greatest habit you could ever break is the habit of being yourself.” To reinforce Dispenza’s notion of habits, Albert Einstein once stated that no problems could be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. Einstein believed if you wanted to change habitual patterns and attain this new state of “being you,” you must create a mental picture regarding how you must act, how you must think, how you will talk, walk, feel all the way down to your look.
If you want to outsmart your unwanted tendencies, you need to think smarter. It sounds like a simple fix, however, when the brain is on autopilot, the operating system becomes susceptible to quick fixes and mindless behavior as it bumps up against unforeseen situations or the newness of a circumstance. When attempting to break free from these unwanted ingrained patterns of behavior, what must be kept in the forefront of the thinking brain is what needs changed and how will that thinking help you navigate through the process of restructuring your unwanted habit. But according to Daryl Conner, a thought leader in the field of industrial psychology and author of Managing at the Speed of Change, “People tend to discount new information that is inconsistent with their current beliefs and pattern of behavior.” Conner’s research found the secret to changing all habits lies in shifting ones perception of reality. These perceptions of reality could be compared to a protective membrane; allowing you to absorb the repercussions of life; insulating the brain from the disruption of having to change those inclinations. Think of it this way, your reality represents a mental landscape of those habits that have positively effected you in past life experiences. These preferred trusted behaviors have been nurtured many times over a lifetime. The brains belief system tends to tightly cling to those habits or patterns of thinking which allow it to get through today and the unforeseen future. The problem starts here, if you keep thinking the same thoughts, do and feel the same things, you’re basically hardwiring your habits into finite patterns that reflect your finite reality. You know sometimes a crash landing becomes necessary to promoters the vital restructuring necessary to transform the thought process of the thinking brain. Yes this newness is uncomfortable in many ways because it represents unfamiliar territory. But when confronting a habitual change in behavior, the only option you have is to take steps to strengthen an alternative behavior by creating a new neurological web of connections or suppress the original habit, which will weaken the previous neurological pathways that exist in your brain.
The key to breaking old habits emphasizes a basic principle of training referred to as the Training Effect. Improvement or creating a Training Effect refers to the physiological changes that occur in the body as a result of sufficiently applying the factors of frequency, intensity, and duration to exercise. This principle applies to all type of physical and mental demands. Whether you referring to breaking or forming a habits or becoming proficient at an exercise, the more you do it, the easier it gets. The longer you stick with the idea, your mind and body starts to adapt and a learning effect gets downloaded to the brain which in turn gives your body the training effect. The components of breaking unwanted habits can be achieved when you:
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REPLACE – Replace those unwanted habits with alternative competitive actions. In other words, substitute an interesting new activity for an unwanted behavior as a powerful way to create a new positive behavior. Become aware of the triggers that make you vulnerable to unwanted habits. This requires your thought process to be receptive to new possibilities that challenge and compete with those old practices. The caveat to replacing the unwanted habits comes down to planning; the alternative action must be available and able to be performed at a moment’s notice. And the alternative activity must be appealing enough to compete with the unwanted behavior.
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CONQUER – Conquer your unwanted habits. Unwanted behaviors are triggered only at certain impulse moments. These brief periods of time push your brain to forget any alternative action and it is at this point in time you break your positive momentum by potentially giving in to the urge of an unwanted practice. The impulse moment is a critical tipping point in the brain’s conscious attempt to conquer the unwanted habit, because of the potential to derail even the best attempt to change.
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RELINQUSIH CONTROL – If you want to transform your mind you must lose your objective mind and let go of the perceptions of your current state of reality. You must give up the old mindset of what you think you know and become fully cognizant of the unconscious patterns of behavior you wish to change. With consistent practice, redirecting your urges starts to build new patterns on which to create your new self. Disengaging from the habit of being yourself contributes consciously and energetically to making room for the new you. To make it over the finish line, you need to have carved out an alternative appealing strategy, one that can compete with the negative power of your unwanted behavior.
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REPETITION – A signature personality required lots of practice and rehearsal time. Repetition helps form the neurological web of patterns that will become familiar to the new you. Feed your brain with new knowledge, experiences and learning allowing your neurons to weave new connections. The more your cells fire together the easier to produce the new thinking at will. Like an amazing actor you must think, act, feel and become that character. This is when you are ready to go on stage.
You and your habits are the ones held accountable for defining, shaping, redirecting and living your life in a mindful way. All you need to do is step up to the plate with new thinking, inspiring ideas, and a willingness to experiment, rehearse, learn from mistakes and retry all over again. The body, mind, and energy all exert an influence in actively shaping future behavior and you either consciously take them into account or stand back and watch the damage unfold. “The best way to do is to be,” said Lao Tzu about 2,500 years ago.
References and suggested reading:
Immanuel Kant, Paul Guyer, and Allen W. Wood, Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press, February 28, 1999.
Stephen R. Covey, The 7 habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey, Rosetta Books LLC, New York, November 9, 2004
Joe Dispenza DR. Breaking The Habits of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One, Hay House, Inc., February 15, 2013.
Hebb, D.O., The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2002)Dr. Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Hay House, Inc., 2012
Daniel G. Amen, Use Your Brain to Change Your Age, 2012.
Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne, “Mysteries of the Mind: Your unconscious is making your everyday decisions.”U.S. News & World Report, February 28, 2005.
Church, Dawson, Ph.D., The Genie in Your Genes: Epigenetic Medicine and the New Biology of Intention, Santa Roasa, CA: Elite Books, 2007.
Yue, G., and K.J. Cole, “Strength increases from the motor program: comparison of training with maximal voluntary and imagined muscle contractions,” Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 67(5): 1114-1123 (1992)
Wallace, B. Alan, Ph.D., The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind, Boston: Wisdom Publication, Inc., 2006.
Fehmi, Les, Ph.D., and Jim Robbins, The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of at Attention to Heal Mind and Body, Boston: Trumpeter Books, 2007.
Daryl R. Conner, Managing at the Speed of Change, How Resilient Managers Succeed and Prosper Where Others Fail, Villard Books, New York 1994.
>Dr. Phil McGraw, Ph.D., The Free Press, 2003.
>Joe D. Willis and Linda Frye Campbell, Exercise Psychology, Human Kinetics Publication, 1992.
>Elliot S. Valenstein, The War of the Soups and the Sparks, The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute over How Nerves Communicate, Columbia University Press, 2005.
>David K. Randall, Dreamland, Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.
Alan O. Ross, Ph.D., Personality: Theories and Processes, Harper Perennial, 1992.
>Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D., Learned Optimism, How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Pocket Books, 1990.
>Edward de Bono, MICA Management Resources, 1994.
>Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habits: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.” Random House, February 28, 2012.
>Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD and Rebecca Gladding, MD, You Are Not Your Brain, Penguin Publication, June 5, 2012.
>Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD and Sharon Begley, MD, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Focus, Regan Books an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, October 14, 2003.
>Dr. Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower, Penguin Books, August 28, 2012.
>National Institute of Health (NIH), Breaking Bad Habits, NIH News in Health, January 2012.